Leverage COTS Approach For SDR Designs

SOFTWARE-DEFINED-RADIO (SDR) technology has emerged as a way to help the communications industry easily modify radio devices to support new and emerging technologies. Compared to traditional radios, SDRs offer an efficient and less expensive way to enable multimode, multiband, and/or multifunctional wireless devices that can be configured via software upgrades. Despite these obvious benefits, many obstacles must be overcome in the design and test of SDRs. In "Addressing SDR Design and Measurement Challenges," Agilent Technologies describes how commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technology and an integrated design-to-test flow can aid the rapid development of SDRs.

To develop an SDR while maximizing resources and minimizing risk and time to market, the five-page document advocates the use of a solution that incorporates COTS physicallayer (PHY) orthogonal-frequency-divisionmultiple- access (OFDMA) algorithm modeling with an integrated design-to-test flow. That flow should be able to support both baseband and RF methodologies. Using the commercial algorithm models as a baseline starting point, engineers can customize algorithms to create proprietary SDR implementations. Although this application note serves to educate readers about the firm's SystemVue system-design software solution, it offers good basic information on SDR design with a WiMAX in-phase/quadrature (I/Q) modulator design example.